With school and work and the kids’ activities, life has gotten so busy lately that meal prep is a real challenge during the week. I’m thinking about preparing some meals on the weekends that we can then heat up and heat throughout the week. Figure it’s worth a shot! Does anyone have good ideas for meals that are easy to prep on a Sat or Sun and then eat a few days later?

I am constantly trying to come up with things I can prepare on the weekends. The obvious is meatballs and sauce (which my recipe produces enough for 3-4 meals so I freeze these.) I also make chicken pot pie on the weekends. I’ll make 3 batches at once and freeze these.

We often have quesadillas. I serves these with a corn/tomato/green pepper/cilantro salsa which I will make on the weekends. I will also cook the chicken with Mexican seasonings ahead of time.

I found a great recipe for chicken noodle soup that I make with canned stock, chopped veggies, spaghetti and chicken. Again, I cook the chicken ahead of time.

What I typically find is I can’t always make the whole recipe ahead of time but if I can make portions of it, it cuts down on the work. You can also do things like cut veggies ahead of time (put chopped carrots in water for example) and then those are easy to grab.

If you serve muffins ever with dinner, you can cook these ahead of time too. Every bit helps!

This falls more into the category of easy dinners…but sometimes if we’re at a total loss about what to make, we make breakfast for dinner. Our daughter thinks it’s really fun, and it only takes 5 minutes to whip up eggs and toast. If we have a little more time, we’ll make pancakes, which gives our girl a chance to assist by stirring. And if we’re feeling really festive, we’ll put a couple of drops of food coloring in the pancake batter. Nothing like blue pancakes to liven up a Monday.

We have a crockpot meal every Tuesday. This week, I put a corned beef in water and turned on for 10 hours. will come home to a yummy smelling kitchen and pop some carrots, mushrooms, zuchini and onions (chopped on Sunday) in the oven with olive oil, garlic powder and salt and pepper and cook at 400 for about 30 minutes.

Not sure where you live, but here in CA there are places that are popping up all over where you go into a commercial kitchen, pick and prep meal that they prepare to freeze, they chop all the ingredents, and you assemble then take home to freeze. A couple of friends and I go in at the same time, prep 3-5 meals, catch up on life and take home to freeze.

My staple recipes for freezing are Lasagna, Meatballs and Sauce, Chicken Pot Pies and Homemade Mac & Cheese. The mac & cheese is great because I freeze it in smaller containers for a side to our main meat dish and then just add a fresh veggie.

I also do a big Sunday dinner so that we have great leftovers for an easy Monday night dinner. 2 for 1 is always my goal. I also roast a lot of veggies that will last for a couple days.

Other great freezer meals are: King Ranch Chicken, , Chicken Spaghetti, Potato Casserole (for a good side), All Soups and Stuffed Pasta Shells.

Happy Eating!

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